Somewhere along the line, I got myself subscribed to the MyFonts.com newsletter. I think I was going to buy a font, and then didn't. When it arrived (the newsletter, not the font), I couldn't have been more surprised and delighted. Because the MyFonts.com newsletter is a real treat. more…

If you don't know, WordPress 2.5 was released today. They've been testing for a while, and now it's here.

This version has some great features. Some documentation

• WordPress 2.5 — Matt Mullenweg from the WordPress blog
• Matt's Screencast and WordPress 2.5 RC2 — a little video to show you some neat new features

I'm interested in digging into the code a bit, as some of the folks from the Web Standards Project were involved in coding.

There's an Open Discussion For Dealing With Site Crackers going on at SEO Scoop wherein Donna asks for methods of protecting sites from hacking. While that's a big topic, I'll bite. If we're talking about blogs:

• Take the "stats" line out of the head area; WordPress needs stats less than you need not to tell anyone what version you're running.
• Password-protect the wp-admin directory (this means you'll have to log in twice to get to the Dashboard)
• Do not require that people register before they post (see above); that's less useful than protecting your admin directory
• Have good passwords, and change them regularly
• Do not leave directories CHMODed to 777. Yes, I know the WordPress internal image uploader is neat, but I put images on my blogs the same way I do them for regular websites: by FTP
• Use good passwords on your hosting account as well, and change them regularly

On your computer, use a *good* anti-virus program (which may not be what came with it). I've visited websites (one from a link in a Sphinn submission) that tried to lay keystroke loggers on my machine. That means they could get login information, among other things.

What's a good anti-virus program? You might be surprised. virus.gr runs comparative tests where they throw a large number of viruses (and other stuff) at anti-virus programs, and rate them. See Comparative tests of antivirus programs.

Heck, while you're at it, get a real firewall (that's hardware, not software) for your computer. And if you're using WiFi, take precautions because you're broadcasting information.

And here's Fighting Blog Hacks: Preventing And Eliminating Intruders, a good, very detailed read.

It's not much known, since I don't really push it, but there's a subsection of the DianeV.com website of articles devoted to assisting others, appropriately entitled Web Design Help. Normally I wouldn't mention this here, but there are many web designers who really don't code, and for all I know, some read here.

Now, I'm a fan of programs that help you to work faster and smarter, and that include programs like Dreamweaver. But the bottom line is that you can't really control what you don't understand, and that very much includes HTML code. Fact is that, while Dreamweaver writes clean code, it's entirely possible to use it so that your code is not only not clean, but you've done something that mucked up what you're trying to do. And then, if you're unable to read the code and understand what it does and what it would take to make it do what you want it to do, you're kind of stuck. At the least, it'll take far longer to fix than if you understood the underlying code. more…

I've been meaning to write up how to install Sunshop, my favorite shopping cart, which is made by TurnkeyWebTools (see Sunshop). I'll be interspersing many of TWT's own instructions so that you'll have some references if you're looking through the \docs\sunshop_install.txt file. Installation is pretty much the same for both Sunshop 3.5.1 and Sunshop 4, and shouldn't take long … writing this article took much longer than installation.

Here's part of the new Sunshop 4 admin panel, so you can see that it's not just a bunch of strangely-named and categorized links. Pretty elegant and speedy — things that are likely to impress you or your clients.

Why it's my favorite: Sunshop has a huge pile of features and the TWT guys have been fantastic at implementing new features requested by their customers — meaning, among other things, that Sunshop 4 is search engine friendly out of the box. The entire checkout is secure. As well (another of my requests), while you can edit the templates through the admin panel, you can also edit the templates on your computer and just upload. This, to me, is true love, as I hate clicking through admin panels to edit code (and I always have a backup on my computer just in case). Or how about customers who want to know the shipping fees when they're in the View Cart area and haven't carried through to the point where they'll find out — Sunshop recently wrote a little module (included in the purchase price) that does just that. more…

For those of us who build websites, the upcoming Microsoft browser version targeting issue is something to take note of. This is a development in the upcoming Internet Explorer 8 that will allow you to specify which browser(s) a website is designed for.

As Jeffrey Zeldman wrote at AListApart.com in Version Targeting: Threat or Menace?:

I'd like to live in a world where … version targeting wasn't needed. Designing with web standards ought to be enough, and anyone who works on websites should know how to do it. Browsers ought to have near-perfect standards compliance by now, and if they don't, their manufacturers should switch to folk music.

… To understand version targeting — which we ought to try to do, since Microsoft intends to implement it and hopes at least some of us will opt in — let us examine two different sets of customers that Microsoft's browser must satisfy.

I recommend the article because it explains the whys and wherefores pretty easily. And because, apparently, the only way to opt out is to opt in. more…